Tuesday, August 30, 2016

"As a human being, all you have to do is enumerate exactly the way you don't feel at home in the world, to say exactly how you don't belong, and the moment you've uttered the exact dimensionality of your exile you're already taking the path back to the place you should be. You're already on your way home."

Friday, August 26, 2016

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
~Neil Gaiman

"We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being."

Thursday, August 25, 2016

"Each challenge is there to guide you toward the desire of your heart. Each problem, seen from the positive side, always turns into a blessing. Each sorrow leads to your joy; each doubt to your knowing; each lack to your abundance; each debt to your freedom; each feeling of hopelessness to your power; each cry of pain to your comfort; each act of war to your peace; each act of anger to your love; and each journey through darkness into the light."

"This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival: a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as a unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice. Meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond."

Monday, August 22, 2016

"The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as our culture has defined it."

"If you don't first lighten yourself and your soul of the weight of your burdens, moving about will only increase their presence on you . . . That is why it is not enough to withdraw from the mob, not enough to go to another place: we have to withdraw from such attributes of the mob as are within us. It is our own self we have to isolate and take back into possession."

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."